A market in education – 12 June, Sheffield

The BSA Education Study Group is hosting a workshop entitled, ‘Making a market in higher education: Changing landscape, continuing inequalities?

Date: Thursday 12 June

Time: 10am-4.45pm

Venue: Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University

Recent government polices to produce a market in higher education have caused profound concern and considerable turbulence for universities. These changes include replacing public funding of universities with student fees; the ‘high grades’ policy which frees institutions to compete for students with AAB and ABB grades at A Level; and the ’value for money’ policy in which 85,000 places were allocated to ‘low cost’ providers. Add to this the recent budget statement about the unlimited expansion of places and the entry of new providers and we are now looking at a fully marketised higher education system. However, this market reorientation of higher education towards price, competition and profit has been strongly contested by alternative conceptions of the idea of the university, such as John Holmwood’s campaign for the public university, Stefan Collini’s view that universities protect our cultural and intellectual heritage; and Ron Barnett’s view of learning as ineffable risk which opposes the notion of student as consumer and learning as a consumable product. Alongside this, others such as Andrew McGettigan and Roger Brown have critiqued these policies as a means to enable private capital to make money from a successful higher education system.

More details here